Well, This is one message that I have seen the most in the past one and half months. I have entered my login and password so many times that I keep seeing the famous Microsoft XP password dialog even in my dreams!

It is not work that has been hectic in the past few days. It came up in little proportions. It is the little idiosyncrasies associated with it that have troubled me. Attending hour long meetings that gave no proper conclusions, following a particular process because it is a ‘best-practice’ in the industry, getting complaints about yourself in the form of rumours, worst of all – toiling long hours in office just to please someone else – all these things got me so busy that I thought I would never be back on blogger at all.

When I was in college and read about the stressful life in the IT industry, I used to laugh at them. How stressful could life get when all you did was to sit in front of computer in an air-conditioned office all day? And you did all this for only five days a week- Weekends would be all yours and real fun. Besides you would get lots of money to spend that you could afford all the luxuries you only dreamt of in college days – be it a multiplex movie, lunch at some of expensive restaurants, or a comfortable pair of branded shoes. In all my college days, I never bought branded shoes because I could not afford them. It was only during the end of final semester that I got a pair of ‘Nike’ shoes because a really caring, close friend of mine funded it. I thought all this would change when I started earning. Life would be very easy and comfortable and there would be nothing called “stress”.

Within the first few months of work I realized how hard it was to travel long hours in the traffic which I eventually got used to. But then there was no real, hectic work in our team and I enjoyed the work life. Even after the long travel hours, I would get time for myself at the end of the day to rejuvenate and face the next day with more enthusiasm. But a recent project changed all that. There was so much work in that and many deadlines to achieve that everyone in the team spent sleepless nights to achieve them.

I am not complaining about the work that I am doing. It is really a nice job and I am faced with challenges everyday. I feel proud to be associated with whatever work I am doing for my company. The only part that saddened me was even though it felt nice working, there was so much to be done and it lacked proper planning. There were many things that were not under our control and most of the times, it was just waiting for some result or so. I was just forced to stay back for frustratingly long hours. In most of the cases the work was beyond what I could have done. I began to realize what stress meant to the IT guys. I had no time for anything. On some days, I dint even take the regular tea-breaks during afternoons. After going home, all that I found time was to have dinner and sleep-sometimes no proper sleep at all. I would wake up feeling drowsy each day with no mood to go to work. This would only lead to more frustration in office.

During one of these days, a strange thought occurred to me. I began to wonder whether I would spend the rest of my life being so stressed and frustrated about all the things in life and cribbing about all the issues I had to deal with. Would there be CTRL +ALT +DELETE button to unlock myslef? or would I be locked all my life like this? Life is certainly not meant for that right? If we start to complain about everything that life throws at us, then we will never get over the stress and frustrations in life. It was then that it struck me - what I lacked was nothing but ATTITUDE!

Yes, attitude is the single thing that is needed in life. We need to face life with a positive attitude. If work gets too monotonous, take a small break and start afresh – you will face it differently. If you feel stuck at some point in your code, just leave it for tonight and start working the next day – you will try a new approach. If traffic gets too heavy and you feel frustrated, just listen to some music – you will enjoy it. If the food you eat everyday seems tasteless, try staying hungry for a day and then eat- you will definitely relish whatever you eat. If you get bored of staying in the city and all its dirt, try going over on a small trip to the country-side - you will end up feeling nice about it. It is all in seeing things differently.

This simple thought was enough to get me back on track. I decided that no matter what was the amount of work, I would face it with a positive frame of mind. I would take breaks, play games and post blogs. No matter how boring the meetings got, I would try and learn something from them. No matter how many issues I had to deal at work, I would always take breaks to appreciate the small things in life. No matter how many times Windows asked me to enter my password, I would enter it :)

So that’s the update from my side. I plan to post many articles soon. Please feel free to share your thoughts on this.